


they say you can catch it (but sometimes you're born with it)

by existentialflu (sotakeabitofcalpol)



Category: NCIS
Genre: (mostly towards the end), Angst with a Happy Ending, Gen, Introspection, POV Second Person, Somalia storyline, Team as Family, Ziva's canonically terrible family, except Ari is more nuanced than that, ok I mostly just hate Eli
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-13
Updated: 2020-12-13
Packaged: 2021-03-09 17:55:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,250
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27980361
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sotakeabitofcalpol/pseuds/existentialflu
Summary: You've always loved to fight, feel the singing of your blood as you throw a punch. It feels like home, like family, like sweat and adrenaline and your brother's vicious laughter as you tussle in the evening dust.You love the fight, but you never wanted to fight like this.or; Ziva thinks about family, blood and the way to lose both and come out of it with something better
Kudos: 2





	they say you can catch it (but sometimes you're born with it)

**Author's Note:**

> major warnings for injury, neglect, self harm, referenced abuse and manipulation
> 
> smaller warning for references to ballet culture, mild paranoia and thoughts of death
> 
> spoilers for and up to Somalia
> 
> written in second person because that was the kinda pretentious mood I was in

You've always loved to fight, feel the singing of your blood as you throw a punch. It feels like home, like family, like sweat and adrenaline and your brother's vicious laughter as you tussle in the evening dust.

You love the fight, but you never wanted to fight like this.

You were barely ten, when you first started getting the pains in your ankle. You ran cross-country, were on the athletics and the basketball team, were a moderate level in ballet. You trained for hours every night with every weapon under the sun, until your ankles started giving out every few hours and the exhaustion that would become a constant had settled around your ribcage. Your ballet teacher told you to stop faking it, but your basketball coach insisted you get it checked out, so you could play.

They were actually stress fractures, as it turned out, but your mother was ex-ballet, and your father was...well, your father, so it was weakness, something to be trained out of you. The only reason you were allowed to rest, to ~~almost, never fully~~ heal, was because you couldn't walk without digging fingernails into your palms to fight tears, and a teacher had forced your parents' hand. Your father hadn't even looked you in the eye, dismissed you without a single word. Your mother had looked at you with warring pity and disappointment in weary eyes, shrugged the shoulder that had ended her ballet career, and _that_ had cut deeper than anything your father could ever do. Your mother tried her hardest to love you, and sometimes it was everything, sometimes she smiled as you tore through the streets in her old Subaru rally car. It always shattered you when she just _couldn't_. You understood, and you never blamed her, but it hurt, and your father pressed on the bruise because it was a weakness.

It wasn't the first lesson you received from your father, but it was the point you realised your mother was too fucked up, lived in too much pain daily to know there was a better way of being, the point at which you learned your father's lessons were law and he wouldn't give a damn if you broke yourself following them, as long as you never broke his rules.

Never disobey an order, implicit or not. It doesn't matter if you're the fastest draw, your weapon should already be up. Everything is a weapon and anyone may wield it. If he could, you know your father would etch those words into your bones. You have nightmares of him with a scalpel, sometimes, and that etched the lessons into your brain; probably your father's intention all along.

Ari teaches you the lesson that haunts you, though. _Alsiyad munasib faqat lilsayd_. A hunter is only good for a hunt. Without prey, train stations and shopping malls swirl around you in a nightmare of tiny details; _that man has knife calluses, the kid is carrying a box that could be a bomb, another man has the gait of someone with a concealed weapon, that woman is moving too close for you to stop a bullet._ Your blood is that of a hunter, and you are so very lost without prey. You remember Ari, sat on his bed, barely older than thirteen. He'd been bleeding from wounds that curiously lacked bruises, except for the knuckles of his left hand. You'd bandaged them, even as he tried to push you away, and it took you two years to realise why he'd tried to slam the door in your face. He was right hand dominant, ambidextrous like both of you are, but would always use that hand, on the missions you had assumed he'd been injured as a part of. He could _never_ risk damaging his right hand outside of a mission, though.

Fucking thirteen. He was thirteen, and blood was such a constant in his life that he'd had to make himself bleed when he had no prey. You don't need to see Dr Mallard- _Ducky's_ report, or your brother's body, to know he never broke the habit, kicked the addiction. He only ever felt alive when he was riding an adrenaline high. He was thirteen, and you were lucky, because you started in close enough proximity to his death that you were with the team, your real family, before it became addiction. Doesn't mean you stopped, but...

But nothing, really. One day, your body will be lying on an Autopsy table and the scars will still be there. When Jimmy does the x-rays ~~you hope it isn't Jimmy. he's too pure, too free of blood for this. he'd be the easiest quarry you ever had, but that doesn't really matter. what matters is that he's always the one who does the x-rays~~ , he'll find broken bones, old, healed almost-correctly. Nobody will say it aloud, but your bones will tell a story of abuse that your scars will make a story of a child soldier.

And those scars are the reason you categorise on a scale of weakness rather than whatever kinder one everybody else says about. You notice things in an opponent ~~when did they stop being prey?~~ , the way McGee is a surprisingly good shot, the way Tony coughs after a foot chase like his lungs are going to give out, the way Gibbs will never explain his plan or ask for help, the way Abby will work herself into a frenzy. You know exactly how you ~~will~~ would take the down in a fight. That's the reason you know that family is a weakness that you would never come back from exploiting. Ari exploited that weakness in Gibbs, and now he's dead, because Gibbs played it right back at him. They have formed a family, and you don't know how you ended up a part of it, but you suddenly realise you have, and that night is the night you finally cry, properly for the family you lost.

It feels like a betrayal.

It feels like you're betraying your blood, becoming part of this family, until you watch as McGee protects his sister, until you realise there are only two of you left in your blood family, now, until you catch yourself in the mirror and see your scars, feel the dull ache that echoes through hollow and badly healed bones and remember that your own blood put you there, forced you into situations that etched those scars into your skin.

Those orders send you to Somalia, your desire to atone for the death of an innocent during your hunt sends you to Saleem. He tortured you, and it hurts, it goddamn fucking hurts, but he uses a sharp knife, and he doesn't twist as he pulls out.

A hunter is only good for the hunt, Ari's voice whispers in the cargo plane home. You are about to forsake the hunt. What does that make you?

Tony and McGee, laying down their lives for you. Gibbs, stood shadowed in the doorway in the way your father has been a hundred times, but reaching out to bring you all home. Tony, sleeping off the drugs and tugging you over into his shoulder, Tim, slightly further away and occasionally wincing in pain, but still with his leg touching yours, Gibbs sat opposite watching over all of you. Abby and Ducky and Jimmy waiting back at home. _Home_.

You cast aside the hunt, right there and then. Because it makes you family.

**Author's Note:**

> Ziva deserves a proper family and Eli David did not deserve a redemption arc, not even a little bit. As an older sibling, I have a lot of feelings about Ari. This is what resulted.
> 
> I hope that hebrew is correct, but let me know if it isn't
> 
> partially inspired by the entity of the Hunt from TMA. 
> 
> title from runs in the family by amanda palmer


End file.
